Soon after you came to Christ you sensed a call to ministry. How do you account for those early stirrings?
At 14 when I got saved I went to a youth convention through the local church. My first time at something like that. I knelt at the altar, because that’s what everybody did, and this lady started praying for me, speaking in tongues and then interpreting and prophesying. And here’s what she said. I will remember this till the day I die.
“Have you not heard? I have called you to be a great leader. Stay in my path. I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you.”
Mind you, I’m 14. So I heard what she said, and that stayed recorded in me.
I got up from the altar at the hotel where the youth convention was being held and I headed toward the elevator to go to my room and a guy comes into the elevator, a tall guy. He turned to me and said, “Have you not heard? I have called you to be a great leader. Stay in my path.” The same thing the lady said.
Now I’m freaking out. It’s like the seed of ministry was being planted in my life. It was like, “Hey, Choco, before you get a little bit wild because you’re 14—and I know your brothers are over here and they’re in gangs—let me tell you, I’ve got a plan for you.”
So I took that word, and I got into the local church and did anything that was needed—whether it be puppets, cleaning the washroom. I just felt that’s what the Lord wanted me to do. I became a Sunday school teacher and started leading the youth group at 20 years old.
At 24 I got married and became the youth director for our district in the Assemblies of God, over 100 churches. At the time I thought, OK, this is what God said when I was 14. Ten years later I had become a leader of 11 states. But God had more.
Did you go through a period of rebellion?
No, I never drank, never did drugs, never did the gangs. I became zealous about this found love at 14. I mean, I was ministering to prostitutes as a teenager. Gang members would stop me on the street, wanting to know my affiliation. I told them I was with the Lord Jesus Christ and they left me alone. So you’ve got this good news, this gospel, this message that was given to you and it’s transforming your life. It gives you purpose and direction.
Very early in your faith journey you started talking to people about Christ. How did you come to sense that responsibility?
We didn’t have any evangelism program per se. Later on in the church we started doing EE—Evangelism Explosion. But in high school, I was doing prayer times in my public school, without coaching, without teaching. I just felt like, Hey, I need to share this—what I’m sensing, what I’m feeling. No one needed to teach me to do it—I just felt like I couldn’t contain it. It became natural to talk to people at a bus stop, “Hey, what are you doing? Do you know where you’ll spend eternity?” I was uncoached. I know I did a lot of things wrong. But I was passionate about it.
Now even at 50 years old, when I go to a restaurant with my wife I share with the waiter or waitress. “Hey, I’m a pastor of a church and you’re serving us, is there anything you want us to pray about?” And I begin that dialogue. So even now I feel a sense that people need to know what I know.
